CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
"Say do you believe all that about the Devil?" "No, don't let them kid you. That's just like Santa Claus, it's your old man." A postcard from Hell, Michigan, date uncertain.Speaking of which, what exactly are a snowball's chances in hell? See A Snowball's Chance in Hell.
Here are cut-out paper spectacles for seeing more than is readily apparent in any book. They're from ourMachinarium Verbosus: A Curiosity Cabinet of Gadgets To Transform Any Book & Reader, To Be Sure. But please note that Machinarium Verbosus is a book for the few—the very few. If it's important to one's psychological well-being that the machinations of the Universe be neat and tidy and wholly comprehensible by the human mind, then absolutely do not proceed with this book's experiments. Let this constitute a very serious warning: do not take these experiments lightly, as any one of them may induce an existential crisis.
Cut out and don these transformative specs before you read. (Wear them along with your prescription glasses, if necessary.) Reading offers "new lenses for seeing [one]self and the world in different ways. Reading transforms [oneself]" (Jeffrey Wilhelm, Action Strategies For Deepening Comprehension, 2002).
Why symbolic glasses? Symbols invite us "to see more than is readily apparent, to intuit something other than the obvious" (Krzysztof Kieslowski).
"You can learn to keep the lenses of your symbolic glasses fairly free of the dust of ignorance, the grease spots of prejudice, the grime of hatred and fear. You can learn to bend and stretch the frames if they don't fit comfortably; but you can never take the glasses off" (Lew Sarett, Basic Principles of Speech, 1958).